John Nichols — Defend Journalism That Speaks Truth to Power: From Ferguson to Washington

“A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both,” declared James Madison, the author and champion of the Bill of Rights. “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

This is still the essential truth of an American experiment that can only be advanced toward the equal and inclusive justice that did not exist in Madison’s time by a broadly informed and broadly engaged citizenry. When journalists are harassed, intimidated, threatened and detained, the basic premise of democracy — that the great mass of people, armed with information and perspective, and empowered to act upon it, will set right that which is made wrong by oligarchs — is assaulted.

Where assaults on the gatherers and purveyors of popular information occur, those assaults must be challenged immediately. Social media and then mainstream media did just that after Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post writer Ryan Reilly were arrested, detained and then released without charges or an explanation by police in Ferguson, Missouri, as they were reporting on the tensions that developed after 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in a police shooting. The detention of reporters is merely one illustration of the seriousness of the broader battering of civil liberties and civil rights in Ferguson, a battering so severe that Amnesty International has made the unprecedented move of deploying human rights observers to the city.

Moyers & Company
Defend Journalism That Speaks Truth to Power: From Ferguson to Washington
John Nichols

See also Katherine Fung, James Risen: Obama Is 'Greatest Enemy To Press Freedom In A Generation' at Huffington Post.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd spoke to Risen for her Sunday column"Where’s the Justice at Justice?"


"How can he [Obama] use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who 'tortured some folks,' and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?" Dowd wrote.

Risen had one word to describe Obama's actions: "hypocritical."

"A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin," he told Dowd. "They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation."

"How can he [Obama] use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who 'tortured some folks,' and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?" Dowd wrote.
Risen had one word to describe Obama's actions: "hypocritical."
"A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin," he told Dowd. "They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation."